The world is rich with many colors, and variations thereof, based on lightness, hue, and saturation within a certain color family. Many products are manufactured that are colored in very specific ways, such as architectural coatings (i.e. paints), cosmetics, textiles, and the like. Standard color selection systems are published, including the Pantone Color Guides, the Dainippon Ink and Chemicals (DIC) Color Guide, the RAL Color Standard, the HKS Color System, the Natural Color System (NCS), the Munsell Book of Color, and the like. It is often desirable to present the full selection of colors in a visual display. Because of the many colors that may be available, it is challenging to create a display that is easy to understand, and from which a customer may choose the desired color. Manufacturers often use color sample cards, or textile swatches, or color charts to present the range of colors, and all of their variations. The arrangement of these color sample cards, textile swatches, and color charts is essential to creating a pleasing visual display.
Currently, color sample cards are typically produced by blade coating a wide roll of paper, air drying the coated paper, rolling the paper up, and then taking the roll of paper to a printing system, such as a web-offset press, in order to print onto the substrate labels, identifiers, trademarks and such in a second printing step, so that consumers can identify the color that is selected by the store technician who will then request the formula from the recipe database. If anything goes wrong, the whole process must be repeated. Therefore, there is a need for a more efficient process to produce the color sample cards.
Moreover, it has typically been a challenge to accurately re-produce the range of colors available for a product, such as a paint, onto, for example, color sample cards. Various methods of printing custom-colors have been developed in an attempt to re-produce the full range of colors, wherein the colors closely match the actual product colors.
Typically, custom colors have been printed by halftone printing, wherein the desired color is achieved by overprinting different amounts of the primary colors in a set, such as the cyan, magenta, yellow and black (CMYK) cartridges found in standard ink jet printers, as well as extended color ink sets for ink jet printers in general, such as CMYK+OGV. However, the number of custom colors that can be produced in this way is limited by the number of primary colors that are used. Despite advances, the halftone process is severely limited in terms of accuracy of the output color, registration of color, non-uniformity of the color, blurring, color variances, etc.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,270,123 discloses a color identification and selection display, based on lightness values or levels, for use in connection with the retail sale of custom-tinted architectural coatings and paints.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,502,033 and 8,089,482 disclose a computer display of color elements that is grouped within a plurality of color families which are organized in accordance with a circular color chart and a columnar chart.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,999,825 discloses a computer-based color selection system. The colors in the database are arranged based on color theory.
U.S. Patent Application No. 2004/0046803 discloses a computer-based color selection system. A plurality of colors are categorized into one of a plurality of color groups, to which a reference color can be matched.
U.S. Patent Application No. 2005/0146531 discloses a paint color matching and coordinating system which chooses harmonious sets of paint colors based on an input reference color.
U.S. Patent Application No. 2006/0203245 discloses a color card wherein a light color tone occupies a larger space than the darker color tones on a color card.
U.S. Patent Application No. 2008/0026347 discloses a kit that can be used to create and select paint colors, containing at least one base color paint, several containers of colored tints, and a booklet with coordinated matching sheets and self-adhesive stickers.
U.S. Patent Application No. 2010/0169255 discloses a searchable database for finding a paint color having a desired texture. Methods for using the database are also disclosed.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,938,984 discloses an inkjet printing system apparatus, wherein a custom color is produced by mixing multiple colored inks blended in pre-selected combinations, and printing a solid image pattern, rather than multiple halftone image patterns. Although U.S. Pat. No. 6,938,984 mentions that ink colors are matched to custom colors, no color matching criteria are provided. The focus of the invention is the configuration of the printer itself.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,258,407 discloses dispensing two primary color inks into a custom color chamber, mixing the inks, and printing the custom color ink from the custom color chamber with a print head.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,259,890 and 7,551,321 disclose the use of a printing device that has several cartridges, such as cyan, yellow, magenta, and black (CYMK), plus a custom cartridge containing a non-standard colorant material. Each cartridge has an e-label (memory storage element) that identifies the ink contained in that cartridge.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,942,488 discloses a custom color print head capable of mixing custom color inks for an imaging device, by combining inks from a pre-loaded set of color ink sticks.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,282,197 discloses an inkjet printing method wherein two or more color inkjet inks having the same color and color density, but different compositions, are mixed, and then printed.
WO 2008/045352 discloses custom printed retail paint merchandizing aids, such as color cards, having one or more color schemes displayed in predetermined fields for use in selecting custom-mixed architectural coating colors. The cards are printed using inkjet inks that are formulated with the same pigment dispersions as the architectural coatings, and are thus limited only to those particular pigment dispersions, which are generally aqueous. In addition, the pigment dispersions may not be well-suited for the requirements for inkjet inks. WO 2008/045352 further discloses that the texture (i.e. gloss, matte, etc.) can be reproduced by choosing particular substrates. However, the inks are printed in the conventional manner, and therefore utilize the limited halftone printing process. As such, overprinted colors will not necessarily attain the texture properties of the substrate.
Efforts have been made to develop digital color selection systems. For example, PantoneLIVE™ is a digital color palette library developed by Pantone, Sun Chemical and Esko. Each color is associated with a spectral signature in terms of lightness, red/green value, and yellow/blue value. Using the reference color spectral data, custom spot color inks matching the reference colors can be developed using the InkFormulation Software (IFS) technology. Using IFS, an appropriate ink formulation is predicted, so that the printed color will match the Pantone® reference color. Currently, PantoneLIVE™ and other color selection systems are used by printers/converters for press printing. There is currently no way to use the PantoneLIVE™ digital library, or other systems, to formulate inkjet inks to match the reference colors.
Currently, commercial producers of house paints invest up to many millions of dollars annually in the production of marketing aids. Thus, there is a need for an efficient custom color printing system that can accurately reproduce and show a range of custom colors.